The dignity to die is part of our shared humanity

By Margaret Thomson

Tell my 90-year-old mother that the right to die is a loss for humanity, as columnist Cal Thomas suggested last week.

She spent the last 10 years of her life in and out of hospitals. She had no health problems until she reached 80, but then they struck with a vengeance.

She had a heart valve transplant at 82 that took her two years to recover from; broken shoulder; broken hip; knee transplant; hip transplant; and cataract surgery.

The last two years of her life she lost 50 pounds and became fragile.

Her skin was thin and she always had bruises on her arms, from “nothing.”

She became incontinent and needed help walking to the bathroom and getting out of the bathtub.

She heard the voices of her deceased mother and sisters in the next room.

She told my father “this is not my house, you’re trying to trick me” and would not calm down till he got her in the car, drove her around and returned to her home of 50 years.

For the last two years, she said she wanted to die. She came from a very close family, but she outlived her four sisters and most of her friends.

Fortunately, she died in the hospital three days after falling and breaking a bone in her neck.

Fortunately, because otherwise she would have ended up in a nursing home with a metal cage over her head to immobilize her neck for the rest of her life.

She was an educated woman, a school librarian for 40 years, a loving and generous woman. She was always giving and doing for others and asked nothing in return.

She was a hard worker who almost to the end worked for her church and charities.

She was deeply religious and believed in an afterlife where she would meet her family and friends.

But at 88 and in poor health, she was ready to die — but could not.

My 91-year-old grandmother suffered similarly.

She became senile and incontinent in her late 70s and was eventually put in a public home where she got good care but was basically warehoused in a wheelchair all day with others in their wheelchairs, watching TV.

One of her greatest joys in life was sneaking saltine crackers from the lunch table and secreting them in her wheelchair.

This was a woman who stepped up to support her family after her husband died when she was 45; who worked in a factory and never complained about it; who delighted in her grandchildren; and who had a zest for life that she lost along with her mind.

Cal Thomas wants God to decide when people should die. I wish him a very long life, but full of health problems.

Then we can see if he has the courage of his convictions, or if he too thinks that there are times when life as we want it no longer exists and becomes not worth living.

Margaret Thomson, a retired CPA, lives in Marietta.